Biodiversity in the Diet in Vietnam

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Food Intake; Biodiversity; Nutritional Status
• Interventions: Behavioral: Promotion of a biodiverse diet

• Registration Number: NCT05144919
• Lead Sponsor: University Ghent

Brief Summary

Agricultural biodiversity can have an important role in improving diet diversity, quality and nutrition and can be seen as the foundation of the food and nutrition value chain. Increasing the availability and access to local agricultural and/or wild biodiversity genetic resources has the potential to increase production, making more food available for consumption as long as entitlements to access it exist. However, as the history of food security interventions has shown, increasing the production and supply of staple crops alone is not enough to improve food security or nutritional status. However, while agricultural diversification is an important component, it is not alone sufficient to improve diet diversity. Other system elements including women's education and knowledge, intra-household dynamics and women's status and cultural beliefs and practices that improves children's health and nutrition are important to ensure biodiversity has a successful role in improving dietary diversity and quality.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2015-11
• Primary Completion: 2016-12
• Study Completion: 2017-01
• Status Verified: 2021-12
• Study First Submitted: 2021-12-02
• Study First Submitted QC: 2021-12-02
• Last Update Submitted: 2021-12-02
• Study First Posted: 2021-12-03
• Last Update Posted: 2021-12-03

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 400

Inclusion Criteria

• villages: Characterized as Thai village. Only Thai villages will be selected for the study as agriculture practices, diets, food preferences, language and cultures can change drastically between ethnic groups.
• participants: i) Woman of reproductive age (between 15-49 years) who are the mother or primary caregiver of a child between 12 and 23 months of age. This age group is part of the critical 1000 day window for child development and marks the time when young children can potentially consume all foods from the household pot and consume a more diverse diet. As such, it is from this age group that biodiversity can have an effect on children's diets.

ii) Both the woman and the child should be permanent residents in the village selected and do not temporarily migrate outside the village cluster during the year.

Exclusion Criteria

• villages: Urban center of commune/province as these villages/cities do not have agriculture or home garden opportunities
• participants: currently engaged in other agriculture or nutrition programme or intervention apart from what is offered by government extension workers

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Intervention	Promotion of a biodiverse diet	The intervention group will receive capacity building sessions on both Agriculture and Nutrition, in addition to access to routine health and nutrition checks, and agriculture extension as offered by commune and provincial staff as normal.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
dietary quality	24 months	Proportion of women and children reaching estimated average requirement (EAR) of iron and vitamin A
Mean species richness consumed	24 months	Mean species richness consumed
Consumption of nutrient rich food groups	24 months	Proportion of women and children consuming 3 Dark Green leafy vegetables, Vitamin A Rich Fruit and Vegetable and Legumes, nuts and seeds by mothers and young children.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
nutritional status	24 months	Mean change from baseline in height-for-age Z-scores Mean change from baseline in weight-for-height Z-scores
Individual Dietary Diversity Score	24 months	Individual Dietary Diversity Score by women and children
Nutritional Knowledge of Women	24 months	Mean score from a set of nutrient and food specific questions
Food and nutrient intake	24 months	Proportion of women and children reaching EAR of 16 key nutrients
Women's Empowerment	24 months	Decision making power on selection of species to cultivate, use at homestead and time spent
Minimum Dietary Diversity	24 months	Proportion of women and children that consumed 5 or more food groups (out of 10)
Consumption of processed foods and drinks	24 months	Mean daily intakes (g) of processed foods and drinks Mean proportion of daily energy, fat, salt and sugar intakes from processed foods
income	24 months	Household Income from sale of home garden species, agriculture, off-farm employment